PC freezing constantly

[PuzzleRocks]

Please help. It has been slow for several works with the odd lock up. Yesterday it crashed several times. I have installed and run Ccleaner. Since then it hasn't crashed and was working really well this morning. This afternoon, however, it has frozen up constantly.

I'm in the middle of a big project so desperately need my pc in working order. Can anyone help?

What happens when it "locks"? Does it quite literally just stick or does it go to black or a blue screen with text?

What version of Windows do you have?

Do you have anything plugged into the computer particularly via USB? For example a printer or scanner. Can you unplug them? Does that help?

It just freezes.
It's Vista.

There's nothing plugged in.

On booting up it won't start normally and is suggesting launch start up repair. Will I lose stuff?

Anyone?

I had somethign similar - I couldn't load webpages or get email, as though I was "running out of internet", with everything just hanging, then it spread to non-internet stuff as well. Eventually I uninstalled Zonealarm, and am now just using the Windows firewall (I know, I know) which has solved the problem. Apparently Word and Excel have internet stuff going on in the background (says DH). Might it be something lik that?

Do you think it could be Norton causing it then? Sorry, I'm not all that clues up about computers.

Could be hardware you know, corrupted RAM will cause that, if you are not on the bare minimum and have more then one on a machine that doesn't use em in pairs, try taking them out and back in again systematically.

Equally it might be worth having a peek inside to see if it's filthy or if the capacitors on the MB have leaked, and try to look inside the PSU with a torch (don't open the thing tho) to see if the capacitors have leaked.

As Ryoko wrote, it could be a RAM problem (though if you're unfamiliar, it's perhaps not a great idea to suggest opening it up, apart from to use a vacuum and suck any of the quantities of dust off the boards (carefully, of course) and to be sure it has had no mains cable plugged in for a few hours before you take the side/ top off.

Another possibility for 'freeze' situations is if the hard drive is near to dying. I've seen a couple of machines (running XP not Vista) where the drive is "on the way out" and of course that's no good in your situation...

1. do you have any mamory sticks or an external disk drive you could plug in, assuming it is running nicely one morning, so you can copy all your work off it

2. when you mention a project, does it need any special software and do you have any CDs needed for that

3. {silly question, perhaps} - do you have any option to buy/ borrow a replacement PC or get a second hand machine (eg running Windows XP) on Ebay for 60-80 quid?

I only put the last option in because there have been quite a number of machines going at modest cost, and to get you through this project, would perhaps be an option, so you have something you can rely on not to lock in the middle of your project and possibly corrupt it.

Norton has become a bit bloated over the past few years (I used to recommend Norton SystemWorks from 2001 to 2004/5 but stopped around then). It has also become more difficult to uninstall, but I've not heard of it causing lock-ups, just being a PITA at being over sensitive to any other software or [the Internet Security version] blocking some tasks.

Oh I didn't realise this had more replies.

Thank you for all your suggestions. DH opened it up and it was indeed filthy. When I booted back up it ran a disk check which took hours and indentified and repaired loads of "damaged clusters" and other things I can't recall.

It runs like a dream now. Thanks again.